When Marvel initially said it would use Iron Man as the kick-off for what would become an interconnected cinematic universe, many scoffed at the idea. Now with billions of dollars in the bank, every other studio is scrambling to turn their own franchises into shared experiences.

The latest player to enter the game is Paramount via Michael Bay’s Transformers series. According to Deadline:

Taking a page from Fox’s incubation of three Avatar sequels and what Disney is doing to revive Star Wars with a sequels and spinoffs, the studio is negotiating with Akiva Goldsman to work with franchise director Michael Bay, exec producer Steven Spielberg and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura to organize a “writer’s room” that will incubate ideas for a potential multi-part Transformers sequel, and come up with potential spinoff films based on the billion-dollar franchise culled from the Hasbro toy line.

The difference between this and the Avatar sequels is the “writer’s room” in question was just there to help Cameron write all three films simultaneously. As for Star Wars, Disney is merely following Marvel’s model to make sure all the new films in a galaxy far, far away talk to one another over time.

It’s hard to say if there’s enough in the Transformers universe to warrant such expansion, but Latino-Review’s El Mayimbe offered this tidbit on Twitter when the news broke:

Here is a free tidbit, one of the TRANSFORMERS ideas they're spinning around has one of the films taking place all on CYBERTRON.

A Cybertron-set film could be cool, as it would take the franchise in a new direction it desperately needs to go. Then again, if the new writers room mandates every new film must contain Optimus Prime and other tired plot points, then all of this will have been pointless.